Tony Wright

Tony Wright is the National Affairs Editor of The Age. He has been based in the Canberra Press Gallery for 20 years, working for The Canberra Times, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Bulletin before joining The Age in 2007. He has written two plays and two best-selling books, was named Magazine Feature Writer of the Year twice, has won several UN Media Peace Prizes and has been a Walkley Awards finalist five times.

A time for questions, not necessarily answers

Tony Wright For a moment, question time seemed in danger of being infected with a wild outbreak of horizontal equalisation.

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Speaker says tweets from Parliament out of control

Tony Wright The government, you may be aware, is having an anxious time figuring out how to regulate the media.

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Abbott pushes softer image

Tony Wright Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has sought to further remake his public image by declaring his religious beliefs would never dominate his politics.

Abbott vows to keep religion out of policy

Tony Wright Opposition Leader Tony Abbott declares his religious beliefs will never dominate his politics.

First bloke revs up for charity

Tony Wright Tim Mathieson, the Prime Minister's partner and a long-time motorcycle enthusiast, is about to climb into the saddle to raise $100,000 to fight child slavery in Cambodia.

Tattooed woman leaves her mark on Gillard

Tony Wright Prime Minister Julia Gillard was in full flight on the subject of why the entire nation should gang up on outlaw gangs when a young tattooed woman shouldered her way through the media pack and cried,...

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Familiar handbook as Gillard plays to the crowd

Tony Wright Law and order and foreigners taking local jobs are among the more reliable standbys in the political campaign playbook, and Prime Minister Julia Gillard has started her day by ramping up those very...

PM will struggle when minders lead up a gully

Tony Wright Among the many black arts practised by political operatives is the ''advance''.

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Channelling Chifley: The Light on Rooty Hill

Tony Wright Sixty-four years after Ben Chifley offered his Light on the Hill, Prime Minister Julia Gillard has delivered her Light on Rooty Hill.

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Refugees tarred with brush of prejudice

Tony Wright Refugees, barely more than boys, worked on our family farm when I was a child. Not one of them spoke anything approaching ''all the English language skills that you might normally expect''.

Tony Wright

PM's pilgrimage to quell the disquiet on the western front

Tony Wright Julia Gillard will have no paucity of distractions during her sleepout at the marvellously named Rooty Hill, a suburb in Sydney's western sprawl which was once Labor's heartland but is currently...

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Tony Wright

Drumroll, then exit on a final cymbal crash

Tony Wright In the last days of the Keating empire a fellow named Bill Kelty gave a spectacular speech.

Tony Wright

It's all low key as Rudd slips into town to help his mates

Tony Wright Kevin Rudd fortunes, according to the bookies, have streaked to Black Caviar territory.

Tony Wright

Sofa, so good: PM's office furniture out of hiding after Howard's deep-seated dislike

Tony Wright You need a very thick hide to inhabit the Prime Minister's office these days.

Tony Wright

Rudd's just in storage, waiting for sun to shine

Tony Wright If you were to splice science fiction, political fantasy and cutting-edge medical science, you may just conjure a vision of Lazarus emerging from a 2000-year cryogenic state to be revived with a...